


Paragons of the Elements

by cyrene



Series: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Zutara, F/M, I Will Go Down With This Ship, REALLY eventual, Tabletop Gaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4047016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyrene/pseuds/cyrene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His name is not really Lee, and he shouldn't be working for his uncle in a diner, but his life pretty much went to hell when he was thirteen. As if that's not bad enough, a bunch of weirdos show up and invite him to play some stupid game called "Paragons of the Elements." Yeah, that's not happening. Except then it does, and now he can't really get out of it.</p><p>Long story short (too late!) this is the "Gaang plays D&D AU" you didn't know you needed, and Zuko's being a killjoy about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Phoenix Diner

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in a modern world, with all bending or supernatural stuff relegated to the gaming table.
> 
> Um, I'd like to apologize in advance for this. There really is no excuse for me, sometimes. One night I was watching AtLA while I was drawing, and I started thinking about the Gaang playing Dungeons and Dragons together. And how much that could potentially go wrong in a really great way, and Sokka as a GM, and Aang as that annoying guy who's always doing shit he shouldn't. And then this happened. And then an outline with a bunch of other things happened, and now I have plans for this weird little AU verse going on, some humorous and some not. With eventual Zutara, and the mob, and all sorts of weird references, and Azula being Azula, and Hakoda shows up at a really awkward time... look, it just got out of hand, okay?
> 
> Also, literally no-one has ever read anything I've written before. So please be gentle, it's my first time.

 

 

 

It all starts with that stupid bald kid.

 

He and his friends start coming to the diner. After-school hours -- evenings and weekends and shit. They’re loud and they laugh a lot, and for some reason that _grates_ on his nerves.

 

So does the way the bald kid says his name.

 

“Hey, your name is Lee, right?” bald kid asks with a big, stupid grin.

 

That’s what his name tag says. That’s what he tells anyone who asks. But, no. No, his name isn’t fucking _Lee_. The kid doesn’t know that, though. What the bald kid knows is that he’s talking to a guy whose name tag plainly reads “Lee.” So why the fuck would the kid have any reason to suspect his name is anything other than fucking _Lee?_ _How does that even make sense?_

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Cool.”

 

Cool? Is he serious? It’s a fucking _name_. It’s better than, you know, _Humbert_ or _Ashley_ or fucking _Jayden_ , but it’s just a stupid name. It’s not like most people even have a say in what everyone in the world calls them on a daily basis. Their parents pick. Or, in his case, his Uncle picked.

 

“Uh, I guess.”

 

“I’m Aang.” After a very long minute of silence, the bald kid forges ahead. “Hey, how come this place is called ‘The Phoenix Diner?’”

 

What is this kid’s obsession with names? What’s with the grinning? Is he crazy or something? When he’s thinking about smacking this little irritant upside his bald head, is he unwittingly daydreaming about beating up on a mentally disabled kid? That’s a new level of reprehensible.

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears his sister laughing at that. She _would_ think that’s funny.

 

“Ask my Uncle,” he growls, and stalks into the kitchen before the damn kid can ask about his uncle’s name too.

 

 

***

 

 

 

He wonders, idly, if they got some kind of group discount on head shaving.

 

There’s the annoying and possibly retarded kid, of course -- Aang, he said his name was Aang, and “retarded” is _not_ a word one should use -- whose head is shaved completely bald. He’s obviously young, still in middle school, and could really benefit from a growth spurt. It doesn’t help that he has _huge_ , child-like eyes and is constantly grinning at everything in a state of perpetual hyperactivity.

 

He’s almost always in there with a guy around “Lee’s” age. He’s tall and lanky, and his contribution to the shaving epidemic is restricted to the lower portion of his head -- on the sides, and in the back underneath a little ponytail. He’s annoyingly loud, but the Aang kid makes him look like a dream by comparison.

 

Pony tail is usually accompanied by his girlfriend, who’s adorable, but looks like she could probably kick her boyfriend’s ass. She was obviously not told about the group discount, because her dark hair is a perfectly normal bob. She seems like a perfectly sensible girl, except for the company she keeps. She thinks her boyfriend is hilarious, though, which is just unforgivably bad judgment on her part.

 

Occasionally, this trio is joined by the third member of the Close Shave Club, a girl around bald kid’s age. She has one of those things where half her head is peach fuzz and the other half is left longer. She lets the longer half hang over her face, obscuring her eyes. It really freaks people out, until they realize she’s blind and couldn’t see even if she got her hair out of her face. She takes no pity, and that makes him like her, even though she’s loud. They’re _all_ fucking loud, though.

_Very_ occasionally, they are joined by _The Girl_.

_The Girl_ has to be Pony Tail’s sister. They have the same tanned skin, the same brown hair -- though hers is a long mass of waves, usually kept out of her way with a braid or a ponytail -- the same facial structure, the same grey-blue eyes.

 

She is stunning, and not just her looks. For someone so short, she’s incredibly fierce, and completely unapproachable. He literally cannot string a decent sentence together in front of her, and once dropped an entire tray of drinks behind the counter when she took him by surprise.

 

She was just trying to pay her damned bill.

 

He’s pretty sure he’s an _idiot_. He’s pretty sure she knows that.

 

 

***

 

 

 

It all starts with that stupid bald kid.

 

“Hey, Lee!” the chipper little fuck calls out, waving him over to his group’s usual booth.

 

Pony Tail, Kickass Girlfriend, and Blind Girl are there, (but not _The Girl_ ) and the way the three of them who can see scrutinize him is a new and distinct form of discomforting.

 

“Yep?”

 

Bald Kid -- Aang, damn it -- stares at him critically for a minute, his young face screwed up with the obvious effort of a thought process.

 

Finally, the kid says, “He looks like a firebender.”

 

Kickass Girlfriend slaps her hand over her mouth, a look of horror on her quickly reddening face. Pony Tail looks _extremely_ uncomfortable, and Blind Girl snorts.

 

“Holy sensitivity training, Twinkletoes, what the actual fuck is _wrong_ with you?!” she asks, her voice filled with mirth.

 

That’s the exact question _he_ would have asked, had he not chosen instead to just stand there, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Because, really, who the fuck looks at a guy with a huge fucking burn scar covering a good quarter of his face, including one eye and what used to be a perfectly serviceable ear, and _casually talks about_ _fire_?

 

Pony Tail goes into recovery mode. “Uh, what my young friend here meant to say is that I’m running a PotE game and we need a fifth party member. Specifically a… uh… well, yeah, okay, a firebender.” At least Pony Tail has the good grace to look awkward about it, whatever _it_ is.

 

He’s gripping the coffee carafe so hard his knuckles are white. He wants to lash out, to hit something.

 

After another minute of just staring, he finally says, his voice quiet and even, “Are -- are you guys fucking with me? I can’t tell; I only got about half of what you just said.”

 

That’s when Kickass Girlfriend jumps in. “No, no! It’s a game. Paragons of the Elements. You make a character, with a personality, and abilities, and gear, and stuff, and you pretend to be that character while the G.M. -- uh, the Game Master, that’s Sokka--” she gestures to her boyfriend, Pony Tail -- “sends you on adventures and stuff. It’s really fun,” she adds lamely.

 

What the fuck is he supposed to say to that? He’s not exactly fucking Shakespeare on a good day, and this is well beyond any conversation he could have imagined himself in.

 

“That’s… uh… nice? For you?”

 

Blind Girl snorts again. “Look,” she says, “every Saturday from one to six we meet at this guy’s place --” she gestures to Pony Tail -- “and play a game that’s so nerdy you should get an automatic wedgie for even thinking about it. But the world is kind of a shitty place, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, and it’s fun as hell to pretend to have super powers and save the world.” She snaps her fingers at Pony Tail. “Sokka, give the man your address.” As Pony Tail is writing this down on a napkin, Blind Girl looks vaguely in his direction and says, “Tomorrow, one P.M. The four of us, and Doogie, and you. Be a hero.”

 

That word gets to him like a punch to the gut. The idea of being a hero, even in some childish land of make-believe, is undeniably appealing to the small and ridiculous part of him that wants to believe that, if he pretends hard enough, he will someday be a person of worth.

 

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” he assures both them and himself in a deliberately flat tone. He turns and walks right the hell away from that booth full of crazy.

 

“See you tomorrow, Hero!” Blind Girl calls out. She has mastered the art of making snide sound like a friendly gesture, like those people who punch you in the arm to show affection, and he has to fight back a smile he never asked for.

 

When they _finally_ leave and he goes to clear the table, he finds to his annoyance that all the dishes are neatly stacked to one side and they left a book on the cleared off portion of the table. The front reads,  Paragons of the Elements, Players’ Handbook over a stylized fantasy drawing of four warriors using elemental weapons: air, water, earth, and -- yes -- _fire_. The book is marked in a couple of places with fresh napkins from the silver dispenser.

 

The napkin with Pony Tail’s address rests next to the book. It also has the date and time of their game written on there. What, in case he forgets or something? Well, at least he knows when someone will be there for him to return the stupid book.

 

His sigh is slightly more dramatic than necessary, since there’s nobody around to hear it.

 

 

***

 

 

Uncle completely played him, and he knows it. He knew what was happening the whole damn time; he just couldn’t do anything to _stop_ it or alter the outcome.

 

He brought the damned book upstairs to the apartment so it wouldn’t get damaged, setting it down on the kitchen table without really thinking about it. By the time his shift is over and he makes it back upstairs, Uncle is already there making tea.

 

“Did you switch the schedule around?” he demands. “I’m never off on Saturdays.”

 

He’s trying not to sound angry, because what he really feels is _panic_. It’s obvious that Uncle knows about those stupid kids inviting him to their stupid game, and _that_ won’t end well. Like the time that girl kept coming in, and Uncle got it in his head that they should go out. She had been really polite about it, but the whole thing had been incredibly awkward, and now she acted weird whenever they saw each other.

 

He feels the Close Shave Club and their stupid game _closing in on him_.

 

Uncle smiles at him, that unrestrained, squinty-eyed, beaming grin he gets because he’s genuinely pleased by something, and _not at all_ because he’s manipulating the situation.

 

“Ah, yes, nephew. Your new friends asked when your days off were because they wanted to invite you to their game. It was no trouble.”

 

He grits his teeth. “ _They’re not my friends._ They’re a pack of weirdos who want me to spend all Saturday afternoon _pretending to be some kind of fire magician_.”

 

He lets that statement sink in for a minute, but it has no effect on the wattage of his uncle’s smile. His uncle is too busy pouring tea and talking about how nice his new friends seem.

 

He debates banging his head on the table until he gets a concussion. No one can fault you for not hopping in the Mystery Machine to go on wacky adventures with the fucking Scooby Gang when you have a concussion.

 

At around this point, Uncle changes tactics and pulls out the big gun.

 

“I am so proud that you’re finally opening yourself up, my nephew, and making friends,” he says in that warm, sincere voice of his. “I won’t be around forever, and I hate the thought of you letting yourself live such a lonely life.”

 

Never mind that the nephew in question _literally_ _just said_ that they _were not_ his friends. There’s nothing he can do at this point; the battle is lost. It’s damn near impossible to deny Uncle when he’s in Sincere and Proud Mode. Something inside him _clenches_ every time, and he just doesn’t want to let the old man down. Not when his uncle gave up everything to live in this shithole with him.

 

So he just says, “Uh, yeah…” gruffly and sits down at the table.

 

He sets the napkin with the address carefully to one side and opens the book to the first bookmark. It’s an introduction to the world the game takes place in, and it’s much more interesting than he would have ever thought.

 

The world is divided into four basic areas: the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Northern and Southern Water Tribes. In each nation, there are people with magic powers over an element: water, earth, fire, and air.

 

He turns to the next bookmark, in the chapter on character creation that details the available character classes the player can choose from. It’s marked at the section on the firebender class. The chapter tells the basics of firebending, and what type of personality usually lends itself to the class -- which he has to admit does describe him -- along with a bunch of suggestions about how to build an “average firebender” character. The book assures him that these are just suggestions and that the character creation process is extremely customizable.

 

It’s a lot of information to slog through. An _overwhelming_ amount of information. He can’t understand how anyone could want to actually make a character and play after wading through this colossal book. It’s too much. His eyes are blurring over.

 

He’s just going to return the damned book tomorrow and tell them no way. Again. He even has a speech prepared. It goes like this: “Hey, Lee here! I know you guys want me to join your group, but it’s actually a really terrible idea. Sorry. Bye.”

 

Okay, it’s not much, but that’s practically a fucking soliloquy coming from him.

 

He’s sure he can find some place to hide out for a few hours, at least long enough to tell his uncle that he gave it a shot, but they just weren’t his kind of people.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still with me, I just wanna say thanks! Seriously. That makes my day. :)
> 
> Also, I can neither confirm or deny the rumors that I had a panic attack when I hit the "publish" button. But I may be the only person I know who can get social anxiety over the internet. What can I say? I'm consistent like that.


	2. Character Creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What kind of person can’t think of a single thing they’re good at?

 

 

The address on the napkin -- wrinkled now, from being stuffed into his pocket -- leads him to a townhouse in the decent-but-not-too-bourgeois part of town. He parks his bike out front, hesitating a moment before he gathers the will to turn off the engine and take off his helmet.

 

He’s holding the helmet and the book when he knocks on the door, and almost drops both. He forgets the soliloquy. The plan is to shove the book at whoever opens the door, say, “Thanks, but no thanks!” and make a run for it.

 

That’s not what happens, though.

 

First of all, it’s Blind Girl who opens the door. He can’t very well shove a book at a blind girl.

 

“Hey,” he says awkwardly. “It’s, uh, me.”

 

Her sightless green eyes go wide behind the curtain of her hair. “ _Ohmygod_ ,” she exclaims -- she fucking _squeals_ \-- “ _Chris Hemsworth?!_ ”

 

“ _What_?! No! It’s Z--Lee, from the diner!”

 

Blind girl snorts. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. Pretty sure Thor doesn’t randomly show up at people’s houses, or smell like tea and those cinnamon candies you’re constantly eating. I’m _blind_ , not _stupid._ ” He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just stands there until she huffs, “Are you coming save the world, or do you wanna stay out here and be the new lawn gnome?”

 

She doesn’t list a third option -- i.e.: return the book and get the hell out of there -- but she walks away, leaving the door open behind her. At that point, he really doesn’t have much of a choice, so he follows her inside.

 

The others are already gathered in the dining room, and it’s the weirdest thing, but they actually look _excited_ that he showed up.

 

“Lee, you came!” Aang exclaims, jumping down from the tabletop, where he had been sitting cross-legged.

 

He opens his mouth to say something about returning the book, but the kid is already off again, chattering away. How can this kid talk so fucking fast? He always feels like he has to pry words out of his mouth like broken teeth, except when he’s angry -- then they vomit forth, and he ends up wishing he were a mute.

 

“Down, boy!” Blind Girl says, thumping Aang on the shoulder and steering him away. She bumps the boy into a chair, and he has to hold back a snicker because he’s got a feeling it wasn’t entirely on accident.

 

“Has anyone bothered to introduce you yet?” Kickass Girlfriend asks with a knowing smile. He shakes his head, so she stops writing long enough to point her pencil around and put a name to all the expectant faces around him.

 

Pony Tail is Sokka, the guy who’s running the game.

 

Blind Girl is named Toph. She’s playing an earthbender, and informs him that both her character and she, personally, are roughly a thousand times cooler than everyone else here.

 

Kickass Girlfriend is Suki. She’s not playing a bender; she’s playing a special warrior class from a supplementary book, which uses an obscure form of martial arts and fans as its primary weapons. She informs him tartly that she is every bit as badass as any bender, shooting a glare at Toph as she says this.

 

Sokka (Game Master) informs him that Aang (Whirlwind of Energy) is a special case. They’ve been running their story from a pre-made adventure put out by the company that produces the game, and the story calls for one player to be the “Avatar.” He remembers reading something about the Avatar in the introduction last night, and it seemed pretty badass. So, while Aang began the game as an airbender, they all have to help him learn the other three elements along the way. That’s part of the reason why they want him to be a firebender.

 

“That’s it,” Toph informs him, “except for Doogie. Now go make your character so we can kick some ass.”

 

Suki gestures to an empty seat and passes him a blank character sheet. He vaguely remembers that the plan was supposed to go differently, but for some reason finds himself sitting down and asking for a pencil. He’s about to ask what the hell he’s supposed to do when the front door slams behind him.

 

“Hey, I’m home! I got some snacks and stuff!”

 

He turns, uneasy as all fuck, and it’s _The Girl_. _Of course_ it’s her. He assumed she was Sokka’s sister; why wouldn’t she be here?

_Now_ he remembers the original plan -- return the book and get the hell out. What happened to that plan, anyway?

 

She sees him -- sitting in her home, at her dining room table -- and her big, blue eyes narrow. “Oh, it’s _you_ ,” she says with a barely contained sneer.

 

He manages to stammer out something resembling, “Uh, hi…” and stands up, holding out his hand, which _of course_ she doesn’t shake, because that would be really stupid. “They said your name was… Doogie?” he asks, unsure. It’s not like they’ve ever exchanged names before.

 

Toph bursts out in harsh laughter, and Sokka and Suki snicker. Aang looks uncomfortable.

_The Girl_ glares at him, her mouth a thin line of incensed loathing.

 

He’s pretty used to being the butt of the joke; he can recognize it a mile away by now. He should have fucking known that wasn’t her name, and now he feels like a total ass.

 

“ _Katara_ ,” she snaps. “I’d ask for _your_ name, but then you’d probably have to kill me.”

 

This is the second time she’s said something like that to him, though the last time wasn’t nearly so sarcastic. He’d earned it, though, so he can’t really complain. Still, he reacts the same way he did the last time she said it, with a bemused smile and a slight shrug, like he doesn’t know what she’s talking about. The Girl -- _Katara_ \-- rolls her eyes.

 

“Enough, Kat,” her brother says, earning the next glare. “Don’t scare off our firebender. We still need to make his character.”

 

They explain that, since they all picked their class based on their personalities, they decided to extend that to the rest of the character-making process. So they need to know what he’s good at.

 

They’re all looking at him expectantly. He feels like an animal in a zoo, being studied by five biologists writing a joint thesis on how fucked up he is.

 

“I’m -- I -- there’s nothing, really.”

 

And that says a lot about him, doesn’t it? What kind of person can’t think of a single thing they’re good at?

 

“Didn’t you once tell me you have, like, twelve years of martial arts?” Aang asks.

 

That’s true, he did tell him that. Of course, he said it to explain to the kid what, exactly, was going to happen to him if he didn’t start sitting _in_ the booth instead of _on top of_ it. It’s like the kid has some kind of aversion to his feet touching the ground.

 

He shrugs. “Yeah. I’m all right, I suppose.”

 

“Have you ever been in a fight?” Sokka asks, one part business and two parts eager curiosity, and he nods. “Not sparring; a _real_ fight.” He nods again.

 

“ _Hello!_ ” Toph calls, waving a hand in front of her face. “Do you mind?”

 

“Oh, sorry. Uh, yeah.”

 

“Did you win?” Toph wants to know.

 

He shrugs again. “Usually.”

 

“So, you’re pretty good in a fight, then,” Suki says, all business, making a note on a scrap of paper. “Anything else?”

 

“Uh, not really, no. I’ve never really been good at anything.” Katara scoffs, and he frowns at her. “ _What?_ ”

 

“Nothing,” she says. “I just have a lot of homework due on Monday, so can you move this along? I have to give myself a migraine endeavoring to figure out Beowulf, and trying to remember what the hell ‘kenning’ is.”

 

He doesn’t really know how to respond to that, so he says, “It’s when they use a poetic phrase instead of a simple word. Like in Beowulf, when they say ‘whale-road’ for ‘ocean,’ or ‘word-hoard’ for brain.”

 

She raises her eyebrows at him, and he realizes it was a trick of some sort. She thinks he’s smart and was trying to trick him into admitting it or something. His face turns red, because he knows she’s wrong, but he played right into her scheme… whatever the purpose of it was. Well, he never for a moment thought _The Girl_ wasn’t weird -- just less weird than her friends.

 

Sokka laughs so hard he tears up. The only thing he can manage to wheeze out is, “ _Word-hoard_!” and that sets Toph and Aang off laughing too.

 

“ _So_ , you got good grades at literature in school, then?” Suki asks, ignoring her boyfriend.

 

He’s doing a lot of shrugging today. “I guess? I don’t really remember. I haven’t gone to a school since I was thirteen.”

 

They’re all staring at him now, and he really wants to disappear. _Ugh._ Was talking to people always this _hard_?

 

“How did you know that word-hoard thing if you quit school?” Aang asks. Suki flicks him hard on the arm and shakes her head.

 

“Well, I can still _read_!” he snaps defensively. “I was home schooled by my uncle. I got a G.E.D. a couple of years ago.”

 

Uncle had tried to enroll him in a regular school for a brief period, after his injuries had healed, but in less than three months he had been sent to the principal’s office five times for fighting, seven times for “disruptive insubordination,” and four times for miscellaneous offenses he couldn’t even recall anymore. Uncle had decided that perhaps he wasn’t ready for public school yet, and they never repeated the experiment.

 

To be fair, “home schooled” is a seriously generous term, considering he mostly just read a lot about whatever he was interested in at the time. Uncle did facilitate this by providing him with a lot of books, though, and occasionally asked him to do specific things. But it’s not like the G.E.D. test was hard or anything. He just hadn’t felt like doing it until after he was old enough to get his driver’s license, when Uncle had casually mentioned that he wasn’t so sure about buying a motorcycle for a sixteen-year-old boy, and implying that this particular piece of paper might prove him stable and mature enough to earn the bike. The joke was on the old man, though, because Uncle was casually bringing up college now and he definitely couldn’t afford enough incentive for _that_.

 

 “I think I’ve pretty much got a handle on this. Give it here,” Katara says, gesturing to the blank character sheet in front of him. Before he can hand it to her, she snatches it from in front of him and starts writing things down, muttering to herself. “Charisma’s pretty much a dump stat, and I doubt Wisdom is much better. High Int, though.” She looks him over with a critical eye. “We’re gonna go with Strength over Con, I think, which is important for a firebender, and a solid Dex score. Not as good as mine or Aang’s, but respectable.” She says that last part smugly.

 

She shows the rest of the table the numbers she wrote down. “Does that seem fair to you?” They all nod in agreement.

 

“What’s a dump stat?” he asks.

 

Aang pats him awkwardly on the shoulder. “It’s okay, man. Mine’s Constitution.”

 

After the initial attributes, the entire process goes a lot easier. After about an hour and a half, they’re done and the Almighty Game Master kicks everyone else out of the room.

 

“All right, here’s the deal,” Sokka says, and he looks very serious about this, considering it’s supposed to be a game. “You need a back story. You can make up your own, if you want, or you can be the Fire Prince.”

 

Those two words, taken individually, are each enough to make him cringe. When put together, they make him see red instantly, and he has to take a deep breath so he doesn’t react irrationally.

 

“What’s the Fire Prince?” he asks evenly.

 

Sokka tells him the story of their game so far:

 

For the past hundred years, the Fire Nation has been expanding their empire, slowly taking over the world. Their ruler, the Fire Lord, is ruthless. The only one who can defeat him is the Avatar, master of all four elements, whose duty is to bring balance to the world. Unfortunately, the Avatar is just a teenager, and all he knows is airbending. Katara is teaching him waterbending, Toph is teaching him earthbending, but they need to find him a firebending teacher.

 

That’s where he is supposed to come in.

 

Until now, the Fire Prince has been a regular enemy of the party, chasing them around the world trying to capture the Avatar. The rest of the party doesn’t know this, Sokka tells him, but it’s because his father, the Fire Lord, banished him, and he can’t regain his honor and go home until he’s captured the Avatar. The game module allows for the Fire Prince to have a change of heart that causes him to switch sides and teach the Avatar firebending as an N.P.C. (non-player character) if no P.C. (player character) is available, but Sokka thinks it would be “way cooler” if he just played the Fire Prince instead of some random firebender. Better for the story.

 

He can’t help but agree that it does make for a good story. Does he want to pretend to be the banished son of a despot, desperately trying to regain his honor and struggling to be a good person?

 

“Yeah,” he says, “I think I can do that.”

 

Oh, sweet fucking irony.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I always felt really sorry for Zuko, because he worked really hard at firebending (and other stuff too) but he had such an inferiority complex because Azula was just naturally good at pretty much everything, and because Ozai was a crappy dad. I hope that translates well in a world without bending, but it does make him a pretty unreliable narrator when it comes to himself.
> 
> Also, I didn't forget about this; I'm just a terrible person. No, really. I have no good excuse.


	3. Ranks in Knowledge: Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Lee" learns how to people, and makes a big commitment. (Spoiler alert: it's not that big of a commitment, bebe; you just have no chill.)

 

 

When he gets back to the diner, he heads straight upstairs to the apartment. He’s _pissed off_ , and what makes it worse is that he doesn’t even know _why_. It’s a useless sort of anger that burns in his constricting chest with no outlet, because he doesn’t even know who should rightly bear the brunt of his fury, and he’s really trying not to just lash out. He’s not thirteen anymore, after all.

 

It doesn’t even register until after he’s inside, at around the same time as he realizes that he had stomped up the stairs and slammed the door, that Uncle was trying to talk to him and he’s missed whatever he had said.

 

Ashamed of himself -- _when_ will he learn to control his temper?! -- he opens the door again, slowly. Uncle is still standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him with an expression that’s probably supposed to be neutral but can’t quite keep out all his hopes. Uncle always thinks he’s capable of _so much more_ than he is, and he never pushes him, but just the _knowledge_ of how far Uncle’s expectations of his potential exceed the reality is exhausting.

 

“Sorry,” he says quietly, “what did you say?”

 

“I just asked if you had a good time.”

 

“Oh.”

 

He thinks about that for a minute. More than a minute. Too long. It shouldn’t take this long for a person to determine whether or not they’ve had a good time, but it’s been a long time since he knew what that felt like.

 

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Is every Saturday from one to six okay? You sure you don’t need me?”

 

Uncle replies mildly, “That will be just fine,” but he can’t quite keep the smile off his face.

 

 

***

 

 

It’s awkward, being the new guy in a group of people who know each other well already. They already have a sense of camaraderie from shared history. They have their own language -- inside jokes, shorthand, and jargon. But he’s used to being behind, being the slower one, struggling to catch up. It’s awkward, but he’s learning.

 

He learns their ages: Aang and Toph are thirteen. Katara is fifteen. Sokka and Suki are sixteen, a year younger than he is.

 

He learns that Aang is a foster kid; his parents are dead (car crash) and he has no other family. He’s a vegetarian, which everyone in the group is pretty nice about accommodating, but it gets him picked on a lot at school. He spends most of his spare time volunteering or doing the weirdest things imaginable, like skateboard tricks, or freerunning, or climbing extremely tall things that should never be climbed. Sometimes they record him doing his crazy stunts and put it on YouTube, where he is surprisingly popular.

 

He and Sokka met while Aang was volunteering at a soup kitchen where Sokka was doing community service for an incident involving a golf cart, a live chicken, and neon green spray paint which Sokka refuses to discuss further.

 

Sokka and Katara’s mother is dead, too. (Home invasion gone very badly.) They live with their father, in a manner of speaking. He’s gone most of the time on business trips, so the siblings essentially have the run of the place. Sokka goes to the local high school with Suki, but Katara is in college, which is amazing since she’s only fifteen. She’s majoring in psychology.

 

Despite her lack of sight, Toph is incredibly perceptive. Her senses of hearing and smell are phenomenal. She likes fucking with people who think she’s weak. She has to sneak out of her parents’ house to make it to games. Her parents treat her like a china doll because of her disability and she hates it, so she rebels in every way she can. She’s home schooled by tutors her obscenely rich parents hire, and she hates that too. She threatens to run away at least once a week.

 

Suki lives in a whole house full of women: mother, aunts, sisters, and cousins. They’re a close-knit group. It’s impossible to keep all their names straight, so he’s not sure exactly how many of them there are, but it’s definitely a fuck-lot. She does track, soccer, and softball at her school, and is good enough that college recruiters are watching her. She once broke a girl’s ankle on the soccer field and, though she maintains it was completely accidental, it’s a common joke in the group that Suki will fuck you up if you get between her and the goal.

 

He tells them Uncle is his only family, and that’s not _exactly_ a lie, while simultaneously being completely untrue. They assume that the rest of his family is dead, and he doesn’t say anything to confirm or deny it. When they ask if it was the Sozins, and if that’s how he hurt his face, he feels safe in answering yes. He did, in fact, lose his entire family (except Uncle, of course) because of the mob, and that’s also how he burnt his face. It’s not the _whole_ truth, but it is a _part_ of it.

 

This town is full of people who have run here because they’ve been victimized by the Sozin family and their “associates.” It’s a common enough occurrence that they understand, and they don’t push him when he doesn’t say any more on the subject.

 

That’s good, because he doesn’t want to have to tell them the story of the _real_ Fire Prince.

 

 

***

 

 

They think it’s weird that he doesn’t do social media. No Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, not even a Tumblr.

 

He doesn’t know what to tell them, because how do you explain to a group of people (friends?) you see every week that your biggest goal in life is to never be found -- and that social media, by definition, is antithetical to that goal -- without explaining why?

 

His sister has all those things. He checks up on her sometimes, but it doesn’t tell him much. She’s never really been the kind to reveal more than she has to. He’s learning.

 

 

***

 

 

Katara is entirely unsuspecting, almost to the point of naiveté.

 

During his second game, when she gets up to go to the bathroom, Sokka grabs her phone and starts fiddling with it. He throws it on the couch in the living room and is sitting in his chair looking perfectly innocent by the time his sister gets back.

 

She frowns at her spot. “Hey, have you guys seen my phone? I thought I left it here.”

 

He’s about to open his mouth to tell her it’s on the couch, but Aang jumps in first.

 

“Nope. Want me to call it for you?”

 

He asks this with a barely concealed grin, but she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t get it. Suki fakes a cough so she can turn away and cover her smirk.

 

Katara gives Aang a smile. “Yeah, thanks.”

 

She stands there for a minute with her head cocked to the side, listening for the ringer. He hears it before she does -- it’s that annoying Delilah song that was inescapable for what seemed like forever. Wait, no, not quite. The lyrics are different.

 

When she hears it, she rolls her eyes. “You changed. My ringtone. Nice, guys. Real mature.”

 

Everyone is laughing hysterically. Except him, because he doesn’t get the joke yet. He learns, though.

 

They tell him that the song is something they found on YouTube called “Hey There, Cthulhu” -- sung to the tune of the Delilah song -- and that it’s a game with this group. They like to spring it on each other at random times, and Katara is the most frequent victim, both because the song annoys her the most and because she never sees it coming.

 

Apparently not knowing about the joke was what exempt him from being a victim, because the next week, Suki gets him with her iPod and an enthusiastic, “Oh, you just _have_ to hear this new song! It _totally_ reminds me of you!”

 

Sokka shakes his head and says, “You actually fell for that?! You have much to learn, grasshopper.”

 

 

***

 

 

He gets his own set of dice: red, with swirls of black throughout and gold numbers etched on the faces, because it seems appropriate for a firebender.

 

It feels like a commitment, and he guesses it is. That’s really not such a bad thing, though. He’s not going to jump in on group hugs or anything, but he kind of looks forward to Saturday afternoons.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it for this one. It can stand on its own (kind of?) but hopefully I'll have time to expand later. I had this whole crazy thing planned out at one point.
> 
> OH! "Hey There Cthulhu" is a real thing; look it up on YouTube. It's pretty obviously not mine, but I am eternally grateful for its existence. I'm using it here as a nod to both my gaming group and the Murder Squash song in "The Raven Cycle" -- because I'm pretty obsessed with both of those things.


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